What is Structural Heart Disease?
Structural heart disease refers to conditions that affect your heart's valves, walls, chambers or muscles. These conditions include:
- Cardiomyopathy
- Congenital heart disease
- Heart valve disease
Silver Cross Structural Heart Disease Program
Our structural heart disease program offers the very latest treatments and diagnostic techniques to assess and treat abnormalities of the heart valves or chambers in the heart.
Structural abnormalities of the heart are sometimes present at birth and considered congenital. Other times abnormalities develop overtime and appear later in life as a result of stress on the heart, aging, infections, or other underlying conditions. Specialists treat structural abnormalities of the heart that include:
- Valvular Heart Disease
- Patent Foramen Ovale Closure (PFO)
Is Heart Disease Genetic or Environmental?
Dr. Reema Sheth, interventional cardiologist, answers how genetics and your daily lifestyle play factors into heart disease and heart health.
Valve Clinic
Silver Cross offers patients with valvular heart disease a multidisciplinary clinic that includes a specialized nurse, interventional cardiologist and cardiovascular surgeon. As a team, doctors evaluate patients, and a treatment plan is designed based on input from all providers. The nurse coordinator assists every step of the way with procedure education, planning and scheduling.
Types of Procedures for Aortic Valve Disease
Transcatheter Aortic Valve Replacement (TAVR)
Why is it done?
TAVR is a treatment for patients with severe aortic stenosis. Aortic stenosis occurs when the valve becomes calcified and narrows. As a result the valve can’t fully open and close and blood flow to the body is reduced.
What is a TAVR procedure?
TAVR is a minimally invasive approach to replacing the aortic valve in patients with severe aortic stenosis. It is an alternative approach to open-heart aortic valve replacement surgery. The procedure takes between 1-2 hours. Prior to the procedure the heart team orders a number of tests to determine the best approach for the TAVR and where they will place opening to reach the aortic valve. At the beginning of the procedure, the doctor creates a small opening where tubes are placed that will be used to deliver a new heart valve.
The opening is either placed in the groin, neck, or space between the ribs that is close to the heart. The thin flexible tube with the new valve is moved through the blood vessels to the aortic valve. The new valve is placed on top of the old valve. The new valve works immediately. The doctor removes the tubes and closes the opening.
Download My AS (Aortic Stenosis) Journey Interactive Toolkit for patients (PDF)
Patent Foramen Ovale (PFO) Closure Procedure
Why is it done?
A patent foramen ovale is an a small opening in the heart between the two upper chamber that did not close the way it should have at birth. It occurs in about 1 in 4 people. Typically, most people never know they have a PFO; discovery of a PFO is typically incidental, meaning it's found while doctors are completing testing for other reasons. It's unclear why the whole remains open in some people. It may be genetic.
A PFO doesn't usually cause complications, but in some patients it might lead to the following:
- Low blood oxygen: Blood moves through the hole (PFO) and does not go through the lungs to pick up oxygen. This lowers the amount of oxygen in the blood.
- Stroke: Tiny blood clots that form in the veins can move through the whole and enter the left side of the heart. From the left side of the heart they can travel to the brain, blocking blood flow and causing a stroke.
If a patient has had a recent stroke their cardiologist and neurologist might determine that closing the PFO is an option to reduce strokes in the future.
What is a Patent Foramen Ovale (PFO) Closure?
A catheter-based PFO closure is an alternative to a surgical PFO closure. The doctor places a thin flexible tube in the vein in the groin area and advances the tube into the heart. The tip of the tube has a device that is used to close the PFO. The doctor removes the tubes and closes the opening in the groin area.
